研究：流言蜚語很強大
Worried about what people are saying about you? Concerns about gossip could influence behavior, including generosity, researchers said.
"As it turns out, the act of gossip can indeed be quite powerful," said Jared Piazza of Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Piazza and Jesse M. Beringa studied the reactions of 72 college students who were asked to distribute tokens with a monetary value between themselves and someone else.
Half of the group were also told their decision would be discussed with a third party.
"Participants who were told that the receiver would be communicating their economic decision with the third party were significantly more generous in their allocations of the tokens than participants who were not led to believe that their decisions would be discussed," Piazza and Beringa said in the study published in the journal Human Behavior.
They added that the most beneficial strategy from an economic standpoint would have been for a student to allocate all 10 tokens to him or herself, but the threat of gossip seemed to have swayed their decision.
Although gender did not play a major role in the study, men were slightly more generous than women.
"Allocations of males were, on average, slightly greater than allocations of females, although there were almost twice as many female participants," the researchers added.
A previous study showed that gossip is more powerful than truth, suggesting people believe what they hear through the grapevine even if they have evidence to the contrary.
在意別人對你的看法？研究人員日前稱，在意別人的流言蜚語會影響你的行爲，包括你的慷慨程度。
北愛爾蘭貝爾法斯特皇后大學的加里德·匹亞澤說：“事實證明，流言的力量的確很強大。”
匹亞澤和傑西·M·貝林格讓72名大學生給自己和其他人分發標有貨幣價值的的代幣，並對他們的具體做法進行了研究。
此外，這些大學生中還有一半人被告知他們的分配結果會被第三個人知道。
該研究報告在《人類行爲》期刊中發表。匹亞澤和貝林格指出：“得知分配結果會被第三人知道的人比那些未被告知的人明顯要慷慨得多。”
研究人員還提到，從經濟角度考慮，最有利的分配策略是把所有10個代幣都留給自己，但對於流言的畏懼似乎影響了他們的決定。
儘管性別差異不是該項研究的重點，但男性比女性還是要略微慷慨一些。
研究人員說：“儘管參與該研究的女性數量爲男性的近兩倍，但平均來看，男性分給別人的代幣還是要略多於女性，”
此前的一項研究表明，流言比事實更具“威力”。即使人們掌握了事實依據, 他們還是更易相信與事實不符的小道消息
